Well well well. It seems that our favorite time of year is upon us: crunch time. I am working on a stop motion for Geoff's class that involves making a suit of women's clothing. I'm working on the costume, but with this awful physics test this week I haven't had too much time. However, I found some inspiration images to help me through the process. First of all, I googled "clothes monster" and got these images which are awesome and make me wish I had time to sew something so splendid. But also, when I found them they were on a blog post about a monster made up of clothing from a bedroom like the idea behind my stop motion. It made me feel quite unoriginal, that someone had even gone to the trouble enough to make a costume. I guess they didn't make a movie!
I'm also inspired by the title sequence from Monster's Inc. (the fact that it has Monster in the title is not really what inspires me but the fact that it is so dynamic and entertaining and yet, a title sequence). I am not sure how I want to make my title sequence work, it definitely will not be as fantastic as the one by Pixar. But maybe if I try hard enough...
I am posting these findings hoping to inspire myself this weekend into doing something. HOORAY physics is almost over. I might get my life back sometime soon.
Anyways, for this project I thought I'd add some effects to an animation that I'd already made. The animation storyline itself was supposed to have rain, but I didn't know how to do rain with paper and stop motion, so I left it out. But, with After Effects and Particles I was able to add the effect I wanted.
The only thing I dislike about particles is how silly they can look. I think my snow looks pretty cool, and perhaps my rain, but the fire just looks terrible. Honestly, I wouldn't have added fire but I needed five particle systems to make. But, I really like that I could add a little debris from the birdhouse breaking that shoots towards the camera because I wasn't able to do that with my stop motion. I guess I have pretty mixed feelings about particles, they are useful in some situations, but in others they are really ugly.
I guess this post sort of sums up how I feel about CG effects in the first place. I really like organic, hand animated effects, they look more natural and are more impressive. I like to think of the fire that I made for this project (which is really bad, I'm not going to lie, particles are definitely not my forte) versus the PES video where they use candy corn to represent fire. It looks better, even though it's made of candy.That being said, sometimes it is really hard to do everything by hand, for example, rain effects out of paper. In that case, I would definitely want to use CG. I guess I compare CG particles to cooking with salt, use sparingly, but in some cases it is necessary.
Perhaps I am not the best at keying, but I thought I turned our idea into something sort of worthwhile. I also realize, I'm a terrible actress. But, I made our scene into a space scene. Complete with floating TV and huge shooting stars. Enjoy.
I'm not sure if we necessarily needed to post this week. I'm looking forward to learning how to key and do more with a green screen. I couldn't make it to class on Monday because of Passover. The one night Jews are allowed to get drunk instead of go to class. It's a good holiday. Anyway, I've been working on my stop motion for Geoff's class. I was originally going to use a green screen but realized I have no idea what I'm doing and that a week from now would be a better opportunity to shoot and key.
Here is the stopmotion.
I think it turned out pretty well.
Also, for my project in this class I'm going to do something with our magic carpet ride shoot. It should be really ugly and cheesy, but hey, I'm learning.
During a conversation with my father about my art (we were looking at my sketchbook) I was told that all of my artwork seems to be drug induced. Although I am not on any sort of drugs, I think my father would have the same opinion about this piece. I had an idea to have a Spongebob Squarepants type intro scene for a tv show. I originally wanted some sort of hungry beaver or woodchuck to be eating the title, but since Angry Beavers seems to have already done something similar, the next thing that came to mind was a hungry pickle. Seriously, not on drugs.
I would have liked to include another little bit of the pickle eating the title, but this was all I had time to do. The voices are all mine, unedited. Also, I couldn't find a good song to put in the background, so I left it blank. But, it's missing a good song, you know?
This project went pretty smoothly. Although still completely uninspired and perhaps running out of time for everything I care about in life, this project is at least PRETTY. I recorded a brief conversation between my friend Mia and I and then I made characters that spoke. From there, I made a little scene of a room with drawn images and images I found on the internet and made look graphicy in Photoshop.
I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to drag a Flash file into After Effects without pixelation. Turns out there is a button. Woo. Anyway check out my silly project.
I don't know if I would consider myself once again inspired by After Effects but I seem to be on the right track. And, considering I have this ridiculous hatred of all things 3-D, I would say my outlook is quite positive. Perhaps what I mean when I say "I hate 3-D" is that I hate crappy looking animation done with inexperienced artists. I don't mean to sound so cynical, but there is a quality to 2-D animations that a lot of 3-D is lacking. That being said, I love love love this idea of "posters" or "billboards." I can take my 2-D designs and my doodles from my sketchbook and turn them into wonderful little scenes.
So, for this week, I'm doing just that. I've already started drawing and coloring with prismacolors (yayayaya) this little scene of a living room. And, for my other animation class I'm doing three animal walk cycles. I plan on combining these to make a scene like something out of Jumanji. An ostrich, a skunk and some sort of robot animal will all run through the scene. I will use After Effects to make the scene look 3-D.
I don't have pictures of my illustrations scanned into the computer yet, but I do have my ostrich walk done. And almost my skunk. But my skunk is making me angry. So I won't be posting it. Here is my ostrich.
